We present a quintet of new poems by Dylan Brennan, taken from his newly-published second collection of poetry, Let the Dead.
Let the Dead concerns itself with life’s alchemical processes.
A couple breathe life into a doomed poppet; a photographer immortalises a corpse; Joyce and Breton rub shoulders on the streets of the poet’s adopted Mexico, where life is a tapestry of 'delicate anthers’ and ‘disembodied tongues’. These dark meditations are set against poems which consider love, miscarriage, childbirth and the daily miracle of family life.
Beautiful and disturbing by turns, these reflections on Ireland and Mexico’s shared colonial past invoke topographies both real and imagined, where ‘things in the ground have a tendency to grow.’
FOUR ATTEMPTS AT MAKING A HUMAN
(not) after the Popol Vuh
I.
this is what happened
we made a small person out of mud
& placed it down there on the table
just like the gods (heart of sky)
we rolled up our sleeves (heart of sea)
to get our hands dirty
in the stuff of life
but something went wrong
its neck wouldn't turn
it just stared up at us
a tiny face with no understanding
a barely pulsating thing
(it couldn’t think)
like an overcooked vegetable
(it couldn’t worship)
a sort of primal
gurgle of lamentation
as it dissolved in hot droplets
into nothing
II.
There’s an old joke about the car made out of wood: wooden engine and dashboard, wooden wheels, the only problem—it wooden start. Something similar here. You see, we are chiselled, framed and shaped in the mouths of our peers, remembered by tongue. And so we did it again. We made a little person, a wooden effigy and gave it some words. She crawled briefly before stopping, spoke eloquently until her face dried up into a kind of expressionless, desiccated mask. Her arms and legs turned stiff, an unresponsive little body, rigid and cold. No blood flowed within, no oil or sweat. We remembered stories of similar cases, effigy corpses left to be devoured, mouths and faces ruined and crushed, twig-bones snapped, ground up for the dogs and so we kissed her goodbye and submerged the crumbling husk in an organic and fragrant resin before burning. We inhaled the smoke, smeared the ashes on our arms and chests as the whole earth darkened in a thick black rain. And that was that. To remind me of our little wood-girl experiment, I keep a single splinter ingrained, a speck I carry with me in the palm of my hand.
III.
ah, my darling wife, we’ve never been gods
can’t make corn into anything but food
and so it took us a fourth attempt (no, I’ll not
mention the third) for the expected shock:
a flush of rosewater in the middle of breakfast
we wove our wildflowers into a son: a filigree
of bog-cotton, mouse-ear, mayweed, bedstraw,
bittercress dampened with sea foam, eyebright
and yarrow strengthened with dried strips
of henequen and he was born and lived and grew
BOG COTTON
Only hours before
the spotting began
we took a walk in the sun and bluster
along the northernmost part
of our island country
and saw the only clouds
were the ankle-high tufts
that marked out for us
like a warning
the softest turf
—common cottonsedge
or bog cotton—
I picked some
and so disrupted / destroyed
anemophilous potential
on that windiest hillbrow
Days later now
on the other side
of the Atlantic
in our tiny apartment
on what were once the shores
of a lake island
the dried flowers spill out
from my wallet
as I look for a phone number
I hold a perianth up
to the morning light
and drink hot coffee
while you sleep
I place the fragile whiteness
on a windowsill saucer
by the cacti and succulents
to be blown out:
carried when the rains come
AFTER AN ULTRASOUND
I find myself down the back field
surveying the flora at my toes
beige and purple clover blossoms
and violet heal-alls or woundwort
among the green asterisks of dandelion
and near the white flecks of yarrow
a fragile trefoil I identify later
(reverse image search on my phone)
and more familiar yellows of buttercups
and daisy hearts and knocking gently
against my shins the stooping
black heads of the ribwort plantain
(a wildflower once used to bring
back the dead) and I think of how
as children we just called it all grass
ANACAHUITA
the anacahuita came
to blossom while we waited
to leave hospital and now greets
our arrival back home how sweet
to see those milk cups
blur on the horizon white-freckling
the land as far as the eye can focus
but no everywhere we look
wildflowers give way
to encroaching rectangles
my son you see this is what they do
from García to Monterrey
they're flooding
the plains with concrete
how long this will last
is anyone’s guess
so for now just breathe
this citric welcome
I’ll show you pictures
when you’re older
A Song of Amergin
I’m the blue land crab lost near the salt marsh
I’m the phantom islet that’s appeared on your map
(poured-out-like-water darkness)
I’m the mangrove that gropes through the delta for soil
(brackish ripples near the swollen beachwort)
I’m a sick thing forming in your drinking water
I’m your dream of the semi-desert
(a cold river taken whole in your mouth)
I’m the shaved head of your friend in the pit
I’m a cloth of worms, I’m that addled flesh
(calligraphy on your chest that moves in the night)
I’m the turkey vulture that circles over thornscrub
I’m the blackberry blossom that trembles in drizzle
I’m the marrow that’s needed to moisten your body
(the fresh white of an egg)
I’m the green dampness of a fertile valley
(the rain that’s been withheld)
I’m the last living ghost sitting down among ashes
(if only his thoughts were printed in a book)
I’m the Christmas cactus with its scarlet flecks
I’m a frail enough thing to be broken like a twig
I’m a jawbone thrown on the heap
I’m the silt that separates one nation from another
and the sodden black harvest of a gaunt island
About the poet: Dividing his time between Mexico and Ireland, Dylan Brennan writes poetry and prose. He is a recipient of the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary award. His second collection of poetry, Let the Dead (2023), is available now from Banshee Press.
